Virtually all three-year-olds in Spain are enrolled in school, most of them in public institutions. Spain’s expenditure on pre-primary education (for public institutions) amounts to 0.9% of GDP, compared to the OECD average of 0.5% of the combined GDP.

Education at a Glance 2012: Country Notes - United Kingdom

Education at a Glance 2012: Country Notes - United States

Education at a Glance 2012 - Country Note for Germany (german)

Australia’s education system achieves good outcomes overall - attainment of upper secondary education by adults aged 25 to 34 was 85% in 2010, above the OECD average of 82%

Canada ranks first among OECD countries in the proportion of adults with a college (tertiary-type 5B) education (24%) and ranks 8th in the proportion of adults with a university (tertiary-type 5A) education (26%).

Entry rates for higher education increased after Italy introduced a new degree structure in the early 2000s. While university-level attainment still remains below the OECD average, the gap for younger generations of Italians is expected to narrow over the next decade.

Since making pre-primary education compulsory in 2009, Mexico has achieved one of the highest enrolment rates of four-year-old children among OECD countries, but high student-teacher ratios pose significant challenges for early childhood education and care.

Education at a Glance 2012: Country Notes - Portugal

The high educational attainment level of the Russian population continues to increase. 88% of the adult population have attained at least upper secondary education and 54% have a tertiary qualification.

Education at a Glance 2012: Country Notes - Spain (Spanish)

Sweden enjoys an 81.5% employment rate for all levels of education – the second highest rate of all OECD countries after Iceland (Table A7.1b).

Education at a Glance 2012: Country Notes - Japan (Japanese)

Brazil boasts one of the largest increases in expenditure on education between 2000 and 2009 among the countries for which data was available.

Education at a Glance 2012 - Country Note - Canada (French)

Korea has reduced the share of individuals without upper secondary education while the proportion of tertiary-educated individuals increased rapidly over the past 14 years.

The 2012 edition of Education at a Glance enables countries to see themselves in the light of other countries’ educational performance.

Governments should increase investment in early childhood programmes and maintain reasonable costs for higher education in order to reduce inequality, boost social mobility and improve people’s employment prospects, according to a new OECD report.

As the spectre of another economic downturn looms large in many countries and is already a reality in others, new data from the 2012 edition of Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators – released today – provides powerful insights into the link between education, economic progress and social mobility around the world.

Whereas expenditure on education and expenditure per student increased significantly between 2000 and 2009, Estonia has seen the largest drop in education funding since the global recession, compared to other OECD countries.

I was in London last week to give a talk on “how to transform 10,000 classrooms” at the annual Teach First/Teach for All conference in London. Some 3,000 teachers and social entrepreneurs from around the world gathered there to discuss ways to re-invent and strengthen the teaching profession.

A modern day Bulgarian proverb says “What money can’t buy, a lot of money can”. Sadly, the truth of this popular wisdom holds well beyond the country it comes from. Sadly too, it seems to work well in schools and universities. Year by year Transparency International (TI), an international anti-corruption NGO, publishes data on the perceptions and experience of people from around the globe...

More people than even before now reach a level of educational attainment equivalent to upper secondary education. The available evidence is very conclusive: this level of education can be considered a minimum level to ensure a job and a living wage.

Indira Samarasekera, President of the University of Alberta in Canada, was one of the keynote speakers at this year’s Institutional Management in Higher Education (IMHE) Conference, held at OECD headquarters in Paris this past September. Marilyn Achiron, Editor at the OECD’s Education Directorate, spoke with her about a variety of subjects

Did you know that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development helped to lay the groundwork for the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals? Even though Development is part of our name, there are many people who don’t realise just how much of our resources are devoted to developing economies and not only to the development of the OECD’s 34 member countries.

education quality, improving education

This report provides the main findings and recommendations of a case study review of entrepreneurship education and business start-up support in Tunisian universities and universities of applied sciences as part of a series of reviews on Skills and Competences for Entrepreneurship carried out by the LEED Programme of the OECD.

More students are looking beyond their borders to give their education a competitive edge. Despite shrinking support for scholarships and tightening travel budgets, 177 million students left their home countries in 2012 to pursue formal tertiary education, an increase of 77 million students since 2000.

The U.S. is now the only country in the industrialised world in which the generation entering the workforce does not have higher college attainment levels than the generation about to leave the workforce. While that is in part due to the traditionally high levels of college attainment in the U.S, an increasing number of countries have approached and surpassed U.S. graduation levels and others are bound to follow over the coming years.

When we think of innovation in education these days, we immediately think of technology: getting more computers into more classrooms, offering online courses to students in higher education. - See more at: http://oecdeducationtoday.blogspot.fr/2012/12/oecd-education-today-and-tomorrow.html#sthash.dv2MKgEf.dpuf

What does the OECD have to say about the state of education today? What are the main OECD messages on early childhood education, teacher policies and tertiary education? What about student performance, educational spending and equity in education? OECD work on these important education topics and others have been brought together in a single accessible source updating the first edition of Education Today which came out in March 2009.

This interactive chart, designed by Krisztina Szucs and Mate Cziner from Hungary, condenses highly complex data on the costs and benefits of education around the world. It clearly highlights important facts showing students, parents and policy makers where the real costs and benefits lie for them in relation to education

The OECD today announced the winner of its first-ever global data visualisation challenge.

This first volume of the report of the Feasibility Study of the Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) focuses on the design and implementation of the Study and the lessons learnt through that process.

This seminar will provide an opportunity for participants to share experiences on issues such as the influence of accelerated commercialization of education and a knowledge-based society.

The global crisis led to a smaller increase in the unemployment rate than in most other OECD countries as employment has been sustained through intensive use of reduced working time schemes.

The well performing labour market has delivered low unemployment and relatively stable wage developments.

This study looks into the use of fixed term contracts and agency work in Russia during and shortly after the crisis 2009 10 with the help of an enterprise survey.

In Colombia, the beginning of a new century has brought with it a palpable feeling of optimism. Colombians and visitors sense that the country’s considerable potential can be realised, and education is rightly seen as crucial to this process. As opportunities expand, Colombians will need new and better skills to respond to new challenges and prospects.

Colombia es una de las principales economías de la región de América Latina y el Caribe y el gobierno tiene planes ambiciosos para su desarrollo social y económico, para lo que es crucial el fortalecimiento del capital humano.

The exceptional turnout at the 2013 OECD/Japan Seminar in Tokyo this week, where over 300 participants from over 20 countries discussed global strategies for higher education, shows that the seminar had exactly the right agenda at exactly the right time. I asked myself how many people would have turned up had this seminar been held five years ago; or whether five years ago, Japan would have ventured to take the lead on this theme.

Most of us think of education as the great leveller; but are our education systems really doing all they can to ensure that boys and girls from all backgrounds have an equal shot at a high-quality education? As this month’s PISA in Focus reports, some countries have been more successful than others in levelling the playing field for their students.

Education is one OECD department that has embraced the information revolution.

In many OECD countries, ECEC services have increased in response to a growing demand for better learning outcomes as well as growing female labour force participation. In recent years, however, the goals of ECEC policy have become more child-centred.

How can we measure what makes a school system work? Andreas Schleicher walks us through the PISA test, a global measurement that ranks countries against one another -- then uses that same data to help schools improve. Watch to find out where your country stacks up, and learn the single factor that makes some systems outperform others.

2013 International Summit on the Teaching Profession

The Secretary-General, Mr. Angel Gurría, will visit The Netherlands on 13th and 14th of March 2013, to attend the 2013 International Summit on the Teaching Profession. He will also go to The Hague and hold a bilateral meeting with Mr. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Finance Minister.

The higher the level of education, the higher the salary cost of teachers per student. In Belgium (Flemish Community), France and Spain, the difference in the annual salary cost between the primary and upper secondary levels of education exceeds USD 1 800 in 2010.

The PISA-Based Test for Schools [In the United States, the assessment is known as the OECD Test for Schools (based on PISA)] is a student assessment tool geared for use by schools and networks of schools to support research, benchmarking and school improvement efforts.

Digital economies are powered by skills. People with the high-end skills needed to invent and apply new technologies are in high demand the world over. At the same time, the portfolio of basic skills needed to navigate technology-rich environments and function effectively in our connected societies has expanded. How severe is the shortage of ICT skills? And what needs to be done to fill the gaps?